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Two lovers
Badriot
Fine Art Drawings - 26 x 21 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 10.2 x 8.3 x 0.4 inch
$1,678
Dharamshala's Lanscapes
Anaiis Lee
Photography - 50 x 70 x 0.3 cm Photography - 19.7 x 27.6 x 0.1 inch
$1,342
Song without words 3/12
J/Y Delaunay-Israël
Painting - 100 x 100 x 3 cm Painting - 39.4 x 39.4 x 1.2 inch
$4,865
Untitled 9 (Nature Takes Back series)
Stela Vasileva
Fine Art Drawings - 30 x 42 cm Fine Art Drawings - 11.8 x 16.5 inch
$738
Untitled 5 (Nature Takes Back series)
Stela Vasileva
Fine Art Drawings - 25 x 35 cm Fine Art Drawings - 9.8 x 13.8 inch
$604
Terra Incognita - Breathe
Guillaume Pépy
Photography - 70 x 105 cm Photography - 27.6 x 41.3 inch
$1,566
Paralelas Vibrantes
Jesús-Rafael Soto
Sculpture - 43 x 25 x 24 cm Sculpture - 16.9 x 9.8 x 9.4 inch
$15,658
Vue d'un parc
Jean Jacques Boimond
Painting - 22 x 35 x 2 cm Painting - 8.7 x 13.8 x 0.8 inch
$1,043
Journey of discovery
Maria Esmar
Painting - 120 x 200 x 4 cm Painting - 47.2 x 78.7 x 1.6 inch
$4,698
Serie: Dolor-3
Montserrat Tobella Bosch
Painting - 35 x 25 x 0.5 cm Painting - 13.8 x 9.8 x 0.2 inch
$4,362
Angel II Dibond
Cédric Brion Studio Clavicule Pics
Photography - 90 x 60 x 0.5 cm Photography - 35.4 x 23.6 x 0.2 inch
$1,117
Fossile Pétri 3
Laurent Lamarche
Sculpture - 41 x 41 x 2 cm Sculpture - 16.1 x 16.1 x 0.8 inch
$2,349
Skull by nature
Tarek
Fine Art Drawings - 6.5 x 15.5 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 2.6 x 6.1 x 0 inch
$168
Untitled (It's all wrong but it's alright...)
Rero
Painting - 121.9 x 203.2 cm Painting - 48 x 80 inch
$18,000
Le chemin de l'Artiste
Geoffrey Callènes
Painting - 65 x 54 x 0.5 cm Painting - 25.6 x 21.3 x 0.2 inch
$1,901
Les Poètes sont des gens d'Ailleurs
Geoffrey Callènes
Painting - 60 x 80 x 0.5 cm Painting - 23.6 x 31.5 x 0.2 inch
$1,901
Berlin, Allemagne, novembre 1989
Eric Bouvet
Photography - 40 x 50 x 0.1 cm Photography - 15.7 x 19.7 x 0 inch
$1,063
Coffee Red
Jennifer Gilligan
Painting - 11.43 x 16.51 x 0.6 cm Painting - 4.5 x 6.5 x 0.2 inch
$1,040
Coffee Blue
Jennifer Gilligan
Painting - 19.05 x 24.13 x 0.6 cm Painting - 7.5 x 9.5 x 0.2 inch
$1,085
Manchas de luz I
Ana María Nava
Sculpture - 50 x 50 x 30 cm Sculpture - 19.7 x 19.7 x 11.8 inch
$7,773
Confrontació V/09
Josep María Codina
Painting - 82 x 100 x 15 cm Painting - 32.3 x 39.4 x 5.9 inch
$4,608
If Held To The Light
Jessica Houston
Painting - 51 x 51 x 2 cm Painting - 20.1 x 20.1 x 0.8 inch
$3,244
The Field of Eisenstein III
Ihar Barkhatkou
Painting - 150 x 200 x 3 cm Painting - 59.1 x 78.7 x 1.2 inch
$6,711
Encre II
Maylis Bourdet
Fine Art Drawings - 59 x 44 x 1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 23.2 x 17.3 x 0.4 inch
$626
Liquid Life Series n3.
Rosario Briones
Painting - 230.9 x 148.8 x 0.3 cm Painting - 90.9 x 58.6 x 0.1 inch
$4,800
Ondulazioni vibratorie
Piero Cipolat
Sculpture - 122 x 122 x 5 cm Sculpture - 48 x 48 x 2 inch
$7,085 $6,377
La pêche miraculeuse d’Argungu, Nigeria
Frédéric Noy
Photography - 40 x 60 x 0.1 cm Photography - 15.7 x 23.6 x 0 inch
$1,342
Nature morte
Serge Plagnol
Fine Art Drawings - 50 x 65 x 0.1 cm Fine Art Drawings - 19.7 x 25.6 x 0 inch
$559
La scintillante
Elizabeth Portnova
Sculpture - 30 x 26 x 16 cm Sculpture - 11.8 x 10.2 x 6.3 inch
$1,174
White
In physics, white is the sum of all the colours. To the human eye, white appears to be the total absence of colour. Amongst artists, white and its many uses in art are continuously evolving and challenging those who would embrace them. Is white, then, a non-colour, or an enhancer of colours? Intangible or material? Absence or excess?
Since Antiquity, white has been appreciated for its symbolic value. In Ancient Greece, where they would paint their statues, it was a sign of incompletion, whereas the Romans believed it showed pomp and imperialist virtue. With the rise of Christianity, white was used in opposition to black in order to emphasise moral dichotomies: the pure, divine white against the darkness. In some cases, however, white was used to show sickness or death, most notably in the pallid representations of the skeletal, crucified Christ.
In the Renaissance white was used to sublimate faces and backgrounds. Da Vinci even based his sfumato technique on the soft transition from light into darkness. Throughout the history of painting, white was considered precious for its ability to reflect light. It attracts the gaze even when used in the tiniest quantities, and illuminates the subject, drawing out stunning contrasts as seen in the works of Rembrandt, or in Vermeer's famous Girl with the Pearl Earring.
With the rise of Impressionism, white was used as the brightest tone amongst shades of grey. While Manet produced canvases which were forerunners to monochromes, including The Reader, which was almost pure white, Monet delivered a stunning gradient of whites whilst recreating the snow at his home in Giverny. The first true white monochrome appeared with the arrival of Malevitch's White Square on a White Background. The artist said 'I have broken the blue boundary of colour limits, and come out into the white'.
Modernists were equally passionate about white and valued it incredibly highly. Miro in particular questioned the status of white on canvases. In his painting Woman, Bird and Star white is in parts boldly painted, but is also distinctive for its absence around the star. Picasso, on the other hand, explored white in conjunction with his famous coloured periods. Piero Manzoni became famous thanks to his 'achromatic' paintings, a series of canvases produced exclusively in shades of white. Moving into the 20th century, white became synonymous with minimalist abstraction. For artists like Kandinsky, white was a cosmic colour, associated with a spiritual search for the absolute, guiding the artists as he seek to express his emotions.
Today, white remains an ever popular subject. Roman Opalka made his name creating a series of white numbers of a white background, while Daniel Arsham reinvents white walls in galleries by letting his artwork drip down onto them. White is a colour with multiple symbolic interpretations. The colour of divinity or humility; of purity and immaculate, of emptiness and absence, but always colour. If blue has Klein and red has Rothko, it appears that no artist has yet succeeded in fully mastering white – but maybe you'll find them in our selection!